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There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood.

February 12, 2012 |

Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today’s progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.

Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly “different” others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.

But, drawing on a sample size of several thousand, correcting for both education and socioeconomic status, the new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the “critical pathway” from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to “rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order” and “emphasise the maintenance of the status quo”. Even for someone not yet renowned for liberal reticence, this feels hard to write.

This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.

But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won’t drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that man-made climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.

Lofgren complains that “the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today“. The Republican party, with its “prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science” is appealing to what he calls the “low-information voter”, or the “misinformation voter”. While most office holders probably don’t believe the “reactionary and paranoid claptrap” they peddle, “they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base”.

The madness hasn’t gone as far in the UK, but the effects of the Conservative appeal to stupidity are making themselves felt. This week the Guardian reported that recipients of disability benefits, scapegoated by the government as scroungers, blamed for the deficit, now find themselves subject to a new level of hostility and threats from other people.

These are the perfect conditions for a billionaires’ feeding frenzy. Any party elected by misinformed, suggestible voters becomes a vehicle for undisclosed interests. A tax break for the 1% is dressed up as freedom for the 99%. The regulation that prevents big banks and corporations exploiting us becomes an assault on the working man and woman. Those of us who discuss man-made climate change are cast as elitists by people who happily embrace the claims of Lord Monckton, Lord Lawson or thinktanks funded by ExxonMobil or the Koch brothers: now the authentic voices of the working class.

But when I survey this wreckage I wonder who the real idiots are. Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls “terminal niceness”. They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.

Yes, conservatism thrives on low intelligence and poor information. But the liberals in politics on both sides of the Atlantic continue to back off, yielding to the supremacy of the stupid. It’s turkeys all the way down.

Analysis:We are asked to believe that Barack Obama, who for over 20 years has professed to be a devout Christian and spoken publicly of his “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” is in fact secretly a Muslim who has lied all along about his true religious affiliation.

No proof of any kind is offered by those who make these claims — no sightings of Obama attending a mosque, no pictures of him reading the Koran, praying to Mecca, or observing Islamic holidays with his family. The entire case, such as it is, rests on a confused and error-ridden recitation of Obama’s upbringing and purported childhood influences. It also rests on — that is to say, exploits — a deep fear and mistrust of the Muslim faith.

At no time has Barack Obama publicly evinced a belief in, or commitment to, any other religion than Christianity.

STATUS: FALSE. Though Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was raised a Muslim, he had lost his faith and become a “confirmed atheist” by the time he attended college, according to his son. Obama’s parents separated when Barack was two, his father moving not to Jakarta, but to the United States, where he attended Harvard. Eventually he returned to Kenya.

CLAIM: Obama’s mother went on to marry another Muslim named Lolo Soetoro who “educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta’s Wahabbi [sic] schools.”

STATUS: PARTLY TRUE. When Obama’s mother remarried, it was indeed to an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, whom his stepson later described as a “non-practicing” Muslim. But it was his “secular” mother who directly supervised his education, Obama has written, sending him to both Catholic and Muslim primary schools after the family moved to Jakarta.

There’s nothing on record to indicate Obama attended a madrassa (Muslim religious school) run by Wahhabists, and in any case it’s unlikely his mother would have chosen to expose him to such an extreme form of Islam given her stated abhorrence of religious closed-mindedness and her stated goal of giving her son a well-rounded education, including in matters of faith.

(Update: CNN tracked down the Indonesian school in question, the Basuki School in Jakarta, which a deputy headmaster describes as a “public school” with no particular religious agenda. “In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don’t give preferential treatment,” the headmaster told CNN. A former classmate of Obama’s describes the school as “general,” with students of many religious backgrounds attending. Obama entered the school at the age of 8 and attended for two years.)

CLAIM: “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim.”

STATUS: FALSE.Once a Muslim? When? Unless I missed it while skimming his two books and a great many news interviews, Obama has never mentioned, let alone “admitted,” being a Muslim at any point in his life. Yes, he lived in a Muslim country during part of his childhood, but there’s no evidence he was literally raised in the Muslim faith, nor has he ever been, so far as any public evidence shows, a practitioner of Islam.

CLAIM: When Obama was sworn into office he used the Koran (Qur’an) instead of the Bible.

STATUS: FALSE. According to news accounts Barack Obama placed his hand on his personal Bible during his Senate swearing-in ceremony, which was conducted by Vice-President Dick Cheney. Those making this allegation have apparently confused Obama with Congressman Keith Ellison, who actually is a Muslim and was sworn in on January 4, 2007 using a copy of the Koran.

Here is another story which resurfaced recently on Facebook:

Obama Faces More Questions on Citizenship
April 1, 2009AP – WASHINGTON D.C. – In a move certain to fuel the debate over Obama’s qualifications for the presidency, the group “Americans for Freedom of Information” has released copies of President Obama’s college transcripts from Occidental College.

Released today, the transcript indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the school. The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California. The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program. To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship. This document would seem to provide the smoking gun that many of Obama’s detractors have been seeking.

The news has created a firestorm at the White House as the release casts increasing doubt about Obama’s legitimacy and qualification to serve as president. When reached for comment in London, where he has been in meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Obama smiled but refused comment on the issue. Meanwhile, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs scoffed at the report stating that this was obviously another attempt by a right-wing conservative group to discredit the president and undermine the administration’s efforts to move the country in a new direction.

Britain’s Daily Mail has also carried the story in a front-page article titled, “Obama Eligibility Questioned”, leading some to speculate that the story may overshadow economic issues on Obama’s first official visit to the U.K.

In a related matter, under growing pressure from several groups, Justice Antonin Scalia announced that the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear arguments concerning Obama’s legal eligibility to serve as President in a case brought by Leo Donofrio of New Jersey. This lawsuit claims Obama’s dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. Donofrio’s case is just one of 18 suits brought by citizens demanding proof of Obama’s citizenship or qualification to serve as president.

Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has released the results of their investigation of Obama’s campaign spending. This study estimates that Obama has spent upwards of $950,000 in campaign funds in the past year with eleven law firms in 12 states for legal resources to block disclosure of any of his personal records. Mr. Kreep indicated that the investigation is still ongoing but that the final report will be provided to the U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder. Mr. Holder has refused to comment on the matter.

Analysis: Hoax. The original April 1, 2009 posting date suggests it may have been intended as an April Fools prank, but given that the text does little else but parrot actual tenets of the so-called “Birther” movement (those who claim Barack Obama is ineligible for the presidency due to a forged or invalid birth certificate, etc.), it barely qualifies as satire.

Is it really an AP news story?

No. The Associated Press (“AP”) never published such a story. It didn’t run in any real newspaper, nor on any real wire service. It can, however, be found posted and reposted on hundreds of anti-Obama blogs and websites.

Is it true that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments on Obama’s citizenship and eligibility?

No. The Supreme Court has refused to hear the Donofrio case, not to mention every other Obama citizenship case submitted to date.

Did a group called “Americans for Freedom of Information” release Obama’s Occidental College transcripts?

No. The organization doesn’t exist — or didn’t at the time the above message first began circulating, at any rate. A similarly-named website went up after the fact, but there is no evident connection between that website and the fake news story.

Has anyone released Obama’s Occidental College transcripts?

No, the transcripts haven’t been released (federal privacy laws forbid it), nor has any court of law “ordered” them released. (Source: Occidental College)

Did Obama attend Occidental under the name “Barry Soetoro”?

No. Soetoro was the surname of his stepfather, but there’s no evidence Barack Obama used it when he attended college. Fellow alumni quoted in the press remember him as “Barry Obama.” According to an Occidental spokesperson quoted on FactCheck.org, the college has no records showing Obama used his stepfather’s last name.

Did Obama attend Occidental under a Fulbright Scholarship for Foreign Students?

No. According to various news sources Obama did attend on a scholarship, but it wasn’t a Fulbright scholarship, let alone a Fulbright scholarship for foreign students. The Fulbright Foreign Student Program accepts Master’s Degree and Ph.D. candidates only. Obama, an undergraduate, was neither. He couldn’t have been awarded a Fulbright scholarship for foreign students even if he had been born outside the U.S. (Source: Fulbright Program)

Did the Daily Mail discuss these “revelations” in a news story entitled “Obama Eligibility Questioned”?

No. No such story turns up in a search of the London newspaper’s archive.

Did Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation release research showing Obama has spent $950,000 or more “to block disclosure of his personal records”?

I’ve found no record of any such “research” being published. The U,S. Justice Foundation does exist and its executive director is indeed a man named Gary Kreep, but he’s on record saying the above claim is a hoax.

The fact of the matter is that specific expenditures pertaining to litigation on Obama’s Constitutional legitimacy aren’t a matter of public record. What are a matter of public record — and what have have been continually misrepresented as moneys spent fighting citizenship lawsuits — are the total year-to-year legal expenditures of Obama’s campaign finance committee. Anyone who purports to know exactly what portion of those funds were spent responding to citizenship challenges is merely speculating.

Moreover, it’s disingenuous to characterize Obama’s legal expenditures on these cases as funds dispensed “to block disclosure of his personal records.” While various personal documents have been requested in the filings, securing their release wasn’t the point of the litigation, which aimed to have Obama’s candidacy ruled unconstitutional on a variety of different grounds.

Lastly, it isn’t as if a presidential candidate whose legitimacy is challenged in court has the option not to mount a legal defense — just ask John McCain.

By ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER

Published: April 27, 2011

JERUSALEM — The two main Palestinian factions, Fatah andHamas, announced Wednesday that they were putting aside years of bitter rivalry to create an interim unity government and hold elections within a year, a surprise move that promised to reshape the diplomatic landscape of the Middle East.

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Moussa Abu Marzouk, representing Hamas, left, and Azzam al-Ahmad of Fatah on Wednesday at a news conference in Cairo, where they announced a deal to create a unity government.

Readers’ Comments

“It is time for the Palestinian people to reject the corrupt and useless leaders who have used violence and strife to insure their positions. It is also time for Israel to reject the extreme factions of their government.”

The deal, brokered in secret talks by the caretaker Egyptian government, was announced at a news conference in Cairo where the two negotiators referred to each side as brothers and declared a new chapter in the Palestinian struggle for independence, hobbled in recent years by the split between the Fatah-run West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza.

It was the first tangible sign that the upheaval across the Arab world, especially the Egyptian revolution, was having an impact on the Palestinians, who have been losing faith in American-sponsored peace negotiations with Israel and seem now to be turning more to fellow Arabs. But the years of bitterness will not be easily overcome, and both sides warned of potential obstacles ahead.

Israel, feeling increasingly surrounded by unfriendly forces, denounced the unity deal as dooming future peace talks since Hamas seeks its destruction. “The Palestinian Authority has to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahudeclared in a televised statement. The Obama administration warned that Hamas was a terrorist organization unfit for peacemaking.

The deal brings with it the risk of alienating the Western support that the Palestinian Authority has enjoyed. Azzam al-Ahmad, the Fatah negotiator, said that Salam Fayyad, the prime minister in the West Bank who is despised by Hamas, would not be part of the interim government. It is partly because of Mr. Fayyad, and the trust he inspires in Washington, that hundreds of millions of dollars are provided annually to the Palestinian Authority by Congress. Without that aid, the Palestinian Authority would face great difficulties.

The announcement was sure to fuel a debate on whether Mr. Netanyahu had done enough in his two years in power to forge a deal with the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas and Mr. Fayyad, widely considered the most moderate leaders the Palestinians have ever had.

The deal also highlighted Egypt’s evolving foreign policy, its increasing regional influence and the challenges that posed for Israel. The new Egyptian government pursued Palestinian negotiations aggressively; has recognized the Muslim Brotherhood, which has deep ties to Hamas; and is reconsidering a natural gas deal with Israel.

Relations between Fatah, the mainstream secularist movement led by Mr. Abbas, and Hamas, the Islamic militant group, have deteriorated since Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006. They ruptured a year later when Hamas seized full control of Gaza, the coastal enclave, after a brief factional war, routing Fatah forces there and limiting the influence of Mr. Abbas and his Palestinian Authority to the West Bank.

A desire for unity has been one goal that ordinary Palestinians in both areas have consistently said they sought. Until now it has proved elusive and leaders of the two factions have spoken of each other in vicious terms and jailed each other’s activists.

But with the Palestinians seeking international recognition of statehood at the United Nations by September, Mr. Abbas has repeatedly said that unity must be restored for a credible case to be made. Other recent developments also played a role.

As Mr. Ahmad said after the news conference in Cairo: “The changes in the Arab region and the political upheaval contributed to reducing the pressure on the Palestinian factions, and by pressure I mean the negative kind of pressure.” He said that he was referring to “the changing rules of the game in the region.”

Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, said that the Palestinian Authority’s failure to reach an agreement with Israel and the anger following an American veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution against Israeli settlement construction in February encouraged Fatah to come to an agreement with Hamas. The Islamic group, he said, was motivated to get closer to Fatah by regional changes, especially the protests in Syria, where Hamas’s politburo is based. If PresidentBashar al-Assad of Syria were to fall, Hamas might no longer be able to use Syria as a base or enjoy the protection, money and arms the country has extended.

“We have ended a painful period in the history of the Palestinian people where Palestinian division had prevailed,” Moussa Abu Marzouk, a representative of Hamas who negotiated the deal, said at the Cairo news conference. “We gave the occupation a great opportunity to expand the settlements because of this division. Today we turn this page and open a new page.”

When he spoke at the news conference, Mr. Ahmad of Fatah recalled the chants of young Palestinian demonstrators mimicking the Tunisian and Egyptian chants: “The people want to bring down the regime.”

“To all the Palestinian youth who went out saying, ‘The people want to end the division’ and ‘The people want to end the occupation,’ we say what you demanded was achieved today,” he said, adding that the period of division had taught both sides “a hard lesson in confronting the occupation.”

He said that Israeli officials had warned Mr. Abbas not to collaborate with Hamas but that “he did not heed the warning, and he responded, ‘Yes, we want Hamas.’ ”

The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority has negotiated for a two-state solution with Israel, whereas Hamas says Israel has no right to exist and continues to fire rockets at Israeli towns.

The Palestinian negotiators offered few details of the proposed transitional unity government, saying that it would be composed of neutral professionals and that the leaders of each side would work out details. All the Palestinian factions are to meet next week to sign the agreement.

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, told Al Jazeera Television from Cairo the sides had agreed to changes in the interim leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a tribunal for elections and a date for the elections. The P.L.O. excludes Hamas, which has long sought entry.

Hamas and Fatah will together nominate members of the technocratic government and a 12-judge election tribunal. He also said that an agreement was reached to set up an oversight committee to regulate security.

In November, officials from the two movements met in Damascus but failed to reach an agreement because of differences on security. It seemed likely that Fatah security forces, which work closely with the Israeli Army, would continue to rule in the West Bank, and that Hamas security would continue in Gaza with a tacit agreement not to arrest each other’s activists.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks broke down soon after they started last September when an Israeli moratorium on construction in West Bank settlements expired. The international powers have been working to get the sides to resume negotiations, and Mr. Netanyahu has recently been considering making an offer to the Palestinian Authority to try to pre-empt a United Nations vote. He is due to address a joint session of Congress in a month.

But with this latest shift in Palestinian politics, Mr. Netanyahu may also shift tactics. “I think the very idea of the reconciliation shows the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, and leads one to wonder whether Hamas will take control over Judea and Samaria, as it did over Gaza,” he said in his statement, using the biblical names for the West Bank.

Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu instructed the Israeli security establishment to take all necessary measures to ensure the enforcement of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza amid reports of plans for another international flotilla. Mr. Netanyahu met with his senior ministers and security officials and said that diplomatic efforts should continue to prevent the flotilla from setting out.

David D. Kirkpatrick and Mona El-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo, and Fares Akram from Gaza.

“President Obama: If you cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits for me, my parents, my grandparents, or families like mine, don’t ask for a penny of my money or an hour of my time in 2012. I’m going to focus on electing bold progressive candidates — not Democrats who help Republicans make harmful cuts.” Click here to sign.

Below are some amazing notes from Obama volunteers who worked passionately for the President in 2008.

Many people still want to believe in President Obama. But the White House needs to understand that their actions now will have real consequences for 2012. The level of grassroots enthusiasm will be determined by whether the President fights for bold progressive change — and takes cuts that hurt grandparents, the disabled, and kids firmly off the table.

The White House will absolutely be watching the progress of this petition. And we’ll deliver the pledge signatures to the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago.

“Like many volunteers on his campaign, I was in love with the idea of Obama. I haven’t given up on him quite yet, but I’m mustering the energy to work on the resistance. He needs to know who we are.”

John Rotolo, Obama volunteer from Florida:

“I’m almost too heartsick to comment…I’m at a loss.”

Barbara Louise Jean, Obama volunteer from Nevada:

“It’s ludicrous to cut Medicare for seniors when Wall Street created this mess without being held accountable. At 69, I’ll be in financial trouble if Medicare benefits are lowered.”

Joelle Barnes, Obama volunteer from Pennsylvania:

“This is like a knife through my heart! This is a Republican thing!”

Suzanne Fair, Obama volunteer from Maryland:

“I know he has to compromise sometimes, but it seems that he is caving to the Republicans far too often. We elected him for real change and I would like to see him stand strong against the corporate rich.”

Margaret Copi, Obama donor from California:

“I contributed more to Obama’s campaign than I have to anything else in my life, but no more dollars from me and definitely not a moment of volunteer time, unless he makes huge shifts and starts to fight for the peoples’ interest.”

Frankie Perdue, Obama volunteer from Colorado:

“I do not think that Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security should be on the negotiating table at all. Have the corporations pay their fair share of taxes.”

Deborah Finn, Obama volunteer from North Carolina:

“This is wrong! We did not elect Obama to have him make cuts in valuable, important programs. He needs to stand up to the Republicans. And he needs to speak to the American people about why it is morally wrong to cut the programs.”

Michaele Bonenberger, Obama volunteer from South Dakota:

“This does not sound at all like the Barak Obama that I worked so hard to get elected in 2008.”

Dotty Hopkins, Obama volunteer from California:

“It makes it hard to gin up enthusiasm for 2012. More like hold your nose and vote again! As a former Obama volunteer, I’m already worrying about my lack of desire to do any campaigning and I’m on our County Central Committee for heaven’s sake.”

It seems crazy that people, some people, anyway, still cling to the belief or possibly the hope, that President Obama is not a citizen born in the U.S.

A poll of Republicans recently indicated that 40% of them were “unsure” about whether or not the president was born in Hawaii.

Here are the facts, reprinted for our reader’s knowledge and to put the issue to rest, so that we can go on to the more important question of how we are going to unite the majority of Americans in their own self interest when the de facto rulers of the country prefer to see us divided. Michael

The truth about Obama’s birth certificate.
Summary
In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document’s authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is “fake.”

We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as “supporting documents” to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

Update, Nov. 1: The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed Oct. 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu.
Analysis
Update Nov. 1: The Associated Press quoted Chiyome Fukino as saying that both she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama’s original birth certificate.

Fukino also was quoted by several other news organizations. The Honolulu Advertiser quoted Fukino as saying the agency had been bombarded by requests, and that the registrar of statistics had even been called in at home in the middle of the night.
Honolulu Advertiser, Nov. 1 2008: “This has gotten ridiculous,” state health director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said yesterday. “There are plenty of other, important things to focus on, like the economy, taxes, energy.” . . . Will this be enough to quiet the doubters? “I hope so,” Fukino said. “We need to get some work done.”
Fukino said she has “personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”

Since we first wrote about Obama’s birth certificate on June 16, speculation on his citizenship has continued apace. Some claim that Obama posted a fake birth certificate to his Web page. That charge leaped from the blogosphere to the mainstream media earlier this week when Jerome Corsi, author of a book attacking Obama, repeated the claim in an Aug. 15 interview with Steve Doocy on Fox News.
Corsi: Well, what would be really helpful is if Senator Obama would release primary documents like his birth certificate. The campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website. How is anybody supposed to really piece together his life?

Doocy: What do you mean they have a “false birth certificate” on their Web site?

Corsi: The original birth certificate of Obama has never been released, and the campaign refuses to release it.

Doocy: Well, couldn’t it just be a State of Hawaii-produced duplicate?

Corsi: No, it’s a — there’s been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it’s been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It’s a fake document that’s on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce.

Corsi isn’t the only skeptic claiming that the document is a forgery. Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are:
The birth certificate doesn’t have a raised seal.
It isn’t signed.
No creases from folding are evident in the scanned version.
In the zoomed-in view, there’s a strange halo around the letters.
The certificate number is blacked out.
The date bleeding through from the back seems to say “2007,” but the document wasn’t released until 2008.
The document is a “certification of birth,” not a “certificate of birth.”
Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it’s stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs.

The Obama birth certificate, held by FactCheck writer Joe Miller

Alvin T. Onaka’s signature stamp

The raised seal

Blowup of text

You can click on the photos to get full-size versions, which haven’t been edited in any way, except that some have been rotated 90 degrees for viewing purposes.

The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.” The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above.

The document is a “certification of birth,” also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents’ hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health’s birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

The scan released by the campaign shows halos around the black text, making it look (to some) as though the text might have been pasted on top of an image of security paper. But the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.

We asked the Obama campaign about the date stamp and the blacked-out certificate number. The certificate is stamped June 2007, because that’s when Hawaii officials produced it for the campaign, which requested that document and “all the records we could get our hands on” according to spokesperson Shauna Daly. The campaign didn’t release its copy until 2008, after speculation began to appear on the Internet questioning Obama’s citizenship. The campaign then rushed to release the document, and the rush is responsible for the blacked-out certificate number. Says Shauna: “[We] couldn’t get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we’ve found out it’s pretty irrelevant for the outside world.” The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 – 010641.

Blowup of certificate number
Some of the conspiracy theories that have circulated about Obama are quite imaginative. One conservative blogger suggested that the campaign might have obtained a valid Hawaii birth certificate, soaked it in solvent, then reprinted it with Obama’s information. Of course, this anonymous blogger didn’t have access to the actual document and presents this as just one possible “scenario” without any evidence that such a thing actually happened or is even feasible.

We also note that so far none of those questioning the authenticity of the document have produced a shred of evidence that the information on it is incorrect. Instead, some speculate that somehow, maybe, he was born in another country and doesn’t meet the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural-born citizen.”

We think our colleagues at PolitiFact.com, who also dug into some of these loopy theories put it pretty well: “It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over.”

In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961:

Obama’s birth announcement

The announcement was posted by a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger who grudgingly concluded that Obama “likely” was born Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu.

Of course, it’s distantly possible that Obama’s grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.

Update, August 26: We received responses to some of our questions from the Hawaii Department of Health. They couldn’t tell us anything about their security paper, but they did answer another frequently-raised question: why is Obama’s father’s race listed as “African”? Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that father’s race and mother’s race are supplied by the parents, and that “we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be.” We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama, Sr., would have thought of and reported himself as “African.” It’s certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be.

When we asked about the security borders, which look different from some other examples of Hawaii certifications of live birth, Kurt said “The borders are generated each time a certified copy is printed. A citation located on the bottom left hand corner of the certificate indicates which date the form was revised.” He also confirmed that the information in the short form birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship for “all reasonable purposes.”

–by Jess Henig, with Joe Miller
Sources
United States Department of State. “Application for a U.S. Passport.” Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.

Neoclassical economics has severe flaws. But since the field is captive to the monopolistic money and banking system, it is very difficult for economists who are aware of this to speak up. If they were to speak about the flaws, their careers would be severely limited. Only the most narrow economists who reinforce the status quo of the debt-based monetary system get rewarded. But they are building an insane system. They continue putting their faith in a false religion that passes for science—a religion that says globalism and infinite scale are “good” as the system continues conquering new territory and killing off the things discussed on CSPER.

The top 10 flaws of neoclassical economics

1. Money monopoly = free market Neoclassical economics calls our current system under a private monetary monopoly a free market. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. The monetary system is an overlay on top of the economic system. Economic systems create value through market activity, but the monetary system on top of them determine who captures that value. Neoclassical economics completely ignores the overlay and the fact that it is controlled by an entrenched private monopoly.

2. Ignores that money comes from nothing but debt Economics does not address the fact that all money comes from debt. It assumes that base currency (M0, core money) is just a free-flowing medium of exchange that apparently comes from the US Treasury. It does not. It comes from the Federal Reserve backed by debt.

3. Ignores the artificial scarcity condition Economics ignores how a debt-based monetary system imposes scarcity on countries and populations. There is never enough money to pay back all the debt, so everyone is forced to jump on the hamster wheel, scrambling to find more money to pay back debt. This dynamic is perpetual. It never stops until the system crashes. It need not be this way.

4. Equates net worth with value creation Economics ignores how the financial class and others serving the upper end of the capital structure capture more money simply because they have entrenched power. They extract value. They do not create it. Economics is correct that participants in the economic system create value, but it misses the fact that the monetary system on top of the economic system determines who captures that value.

5. Assumes free, rational, economic actors by ignoring power differential of debt The power differential caused by the monetary system is ignored by economics. This is the only reason the system is erroneously called a “free market.” The monetary system is entirely centripetal, sucking all power to the center, the top tiered financiers. People are in servitude in a very controlling market, not a free market.

6. Ignores the instability of having a pure debt-based monetary system Economists ignore that the economic system is guaranteed to boom, bust, and eventually end because the monetary system on top of it is completely unstable and fundamentally flawed. It depends upon increasing debt. It cannot increase forever, and it can collapse to zero since people have no sovereign money.

7. Ignores the wealth illusion By not addressing the issue of debt-based money, economics fools people into believing the digits in their bank accounts represent wealth. The fact is they represent a conditional liability, i.e. somebody else’s debt. This becomes obvious during deflation. The illusion is reinforced during inflationary periods.

9. Ignores perpetual increasing scale As a result of perpetual exponential growth, institutions in the system continually get bigger and bigger. We saw this as the economic system made towns, counties, and states irrelevant through the last century, and we are now seeing it as mega banks and corporations are now making national governments irrelevant. People are now living as tiny cogs in a machine of incomprehensible scale. Everything in life has been monetized, so things that don’t generate bank credit get devalued (spirituality, psychology, rest, joy, play, etc).

10. Ignores perpetual increasing velocity Another problem from exponential growth is perpetually increasing velocity. The system has to chug faster and harder as it continues to grow. This means human life has to chug faster and harder. The most obvious manifestation of this is the endless, hectic commutes every morning to jobs we despise. We feel frustration, sometimes rage, toward our fellow commuters. That is just one small example of how systemic velocity affects the human spirit.

Not a simple question, it’s a lot more complex than wiping out Islam or getting rid of Obama

Militant Islam is just one part of world chaos. Obama is just a spokesman.

We owe it to ourselves and our descendants to be aware of historic trends and act appropriately.

To tell our grandchildren, when, G-d forbid, they are living in a rickety, cold-water flat in a deteriorating abandoned city, “I thought G-d would take care of it.”
Wont be a reassuring thing to say.
By then they will know that’s not going to happen.

The first thing to do is to learn what’s really going on in our world.http://csper.org is a good place to start.

Unfortunately, to learn the facts on the site require an investment of time.

There is a link to youtube videos that lay out the situation in economic terms, and they are lengthy, and somewhat complex, particularly if you are not well versed in economic theory.
Anyone on this forum that pursues the information on the sight might express shock and awe, but I don’t think you’ll be able to refute any of the factual material.
So, to paraphrase Hillel, “Go forth and study.”

From the Site:

The truth has never been clearer. We’re living in a voracious empire based on people ownership, i.e. subjugating humans to increasing debt servitude to Wall Street and the global banking establishment. This debt system has morphed economics from a study in human progress to an engine of human enslavement. Spirituality (“sense of meaning”) and psychology have been crushed as a result. Any sense of a meaningful life has almost been vanquished as the corporate system that serves Wall Street has replaced truth with fake media PR and replaced our communities with narcissistic hierarchy. The good news is that this system is on its last leg. It will end. However, we are not prepared to weather the storm and our communities are not equipped to ensure a better system emerges. Our instincts have been trying to tell us this for a long time, but it has felt safer to go along with the fake PR of the corporate/political system pumped through the TV. It’s time to have the courage to face the truth. Then we must rebuild our communities with an economic system informed by healthy spirituality and psychology rather than one specifically designed to crush them. To help facilitate this type of renewal and avoid chaos or tyranny in the coming decline of the empire, CSPER recognizes the need for a new Enlightenment to recover our humanity and break the monolithic monetary monopoly that controls everything. Details on this are discussed in the introductory course to CSPER, Renaissance 2.0.

In coverage of the Andrew McCabe investigation, there seems to be a lot of adding two plus two and coming up with five.The New York Times and Washington Post have reported that a grand jury met on Thursday in connection with a probe involving McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director. As I write this column on Friday evening, no indictment has been returned a […]

A federal appeals court on Friday revived a lawsuit against Fox News brought by the parents of slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, concluding there are plausible claims that the network was party to a “campaign of emotional torture.”

Tesla's automated emergency braking (AEB) system, which was first introduced in 2017, has improved markedly in a relatively short amount of time. Just a few weeks ago, for example, Tesla demonstrated its next-gen AEB system which can more ably apply the brakes when a pedestrian or cyclist is detected. With that said, we recently stumbled across a new vi […]

Archeo ModenaROME—In 2009, the straight world swooned when archaeologists discovered two ancient skeletons from between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. holding hands in a grave in Modena, Italy. They were dubbed the “Lovers of Modena” and have become synonymous with heterosexual romance, their image now often used in Italy to symbolize undying love.When […]

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó rejected allegations Friday that he has ties to an illegal armed group in Colombia, as officials launched an investigation based on photos appearing in social media purportedly showing him posing with members of the gang. The pictures were allegedly taken in late February when Guaidó crossed into Colombia and made a s […]

A pair Confederate statues will remain standing in the city of Virginian city Charlottesville where clashes over their removal left a young woman dead.After city officials decided to remove statues of Confederate American Civil War generals Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, one resident filed a lawsuit to prevent this.

President Trump said he spoke Saturday to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the possibility of a “mutual defense treaty” between the two nations—just days before Israeli voters go to the polls to decide the fate of the embattled leader.

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Police are on the hunt for a solid gold working toilet valued at over $1 million that was stolen overnight on Saturday at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, causing damage and flooding at the birthplace and ancestral home of Winston Churchill.

In coverage of the Andrew McCabe investigation, there seems to be a lot of adding two plus two and coming up with five.The New York Times and Washington Post have reported that a grand jury met on Thursday in connection with a probe involving McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director. As I write this column on Friday evening, no indictment has been returned a […]

A federal appeals court on Friday revived a lawsuit against Fox News brought by the parents of slain Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, concluding there are plausible claims that the network was party to a “campaign of emotional torture.”

Tesla's automated emergency braking (AEB) system, which was first introduced in 2017, has improved markedly in a relatively short amount of time. Just a few weeks ago, for example, Tesla demonstrated its next-gen AEB system which can more ably apply the brakes when a pedestrian or cyclist is detected. With that said, we recently stumbled across a new vi […]

Archeo ModenaROME—In 2009, the straight world swooned when archaeologists discovered two ancient skeletons from between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. holding hands in a grave in Modena, Italy. They were dubbed the “Lovers of Modena” and have become synonymous with heterosexual romance, their image now often used in Italy to symbolize undying love.When […]

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó rejected allegations Friday that he has ties to an illegal armed group in Colombia, as officials launched an investigation based on photos appearing in social media purportedly showing him posing with members of the gang. The pictures were allegedly taken in late February when Guaidó crossed into Colombia and made a s […]

A pair Confederate statues will remain standing in the city of Virginian city Charlottesville where clashes over their removal left a young woman dead.After city officials decided to remove statues of Confederate American Civil War generals Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, one resident filed a lawsuit to prevent this.

US officials have warned that feral hogs heading across the border from Canada may pose a danger to the local environment. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that sightings of the feral animals on the US-Canadian border have increased in recent years. At least eight of the wild animals have been sighted just north of Lincoln County, Montana, t […]